The Women Who Sent Joe Pictures

Remarks from Joe Biden in his recent interview with Howard Stern drew some attention this week. Following the death of his first wife in an auto accident,

"I got put in that 10 Most Eligible Bachelors list," he told Stern. "And a lot of lovely women ... would send very salacious pictures and I just give them to the Secret Service. And I thought somebody would think I was ... "

The president then seems to trail off. U.S. senators and House representatives are not provided Secret Service detail, though many do travel with some security. He then discussed how he met his current wife, first lady Jill Biden.

He went on about meeting Jill:

"I just gave up," Biden continued. "I got a call from my brother. So, I have a girl here at Delaware; Jill is nine years younger than I am. He said you'll love her. She doesn't like politics."

What I haven't seen anyone mention so far is that the Stern interview appears to have been taken almost word-for-word from the White House record of Joe's remarks to the carpenters' union in Scranton on April 16:

And what happened was that I got put on that 10 most-eligible bachelors list in America. (Laughter.) You got it man. I thought it was a pretty cool thing. (Laughter.)

But I used to send more things to the Secret Service because I’d get women sending me pictures that I was afraid I’d get set up for. (Laughter.) And unlike the guy running, I didn’t take advantage of any of it. (Laughter and applause.)

Any rate, to make a long story short, all kidding aside, I — I would just give them to the Secret Service.

And then,

And I get a call from my youngest brother. He said, “Joe, I’ve got just the girl for you.” And he was at the University of Delaware at the time, as this girl was. She used to be nine years younger than me. Now she’s 25 years younger, but — (laughter) —

So, he said, “You’ll love her. She doesn’t like politics.”

After my mother passed away, I got a call from my cousin, my mother's sister's son. I think he was actually closer to my mother than I was. He wanted to vent. "Did she ever give you these long, long stories that always ended with something that showed how virtuous she was?"

"Hmm," I said. "No, I never heard anything like that." (Actually, she mostly wrote me letters about how I needed to lose weight.) But my cousin's account somehow reminded me of Joe repeating the story about the women sending him pictures, with the punch line that unlike Donald Trump, who presumably followed through on the offers, Joe just turned them over to the Secret Srvice -- wha, so the agents could ogle them themselves?

Both Joe and my mother seemed to have a repertory of stories about what hot stuff they are, or were, always with the punch line that they're virtuous, even heroic. It's odd that my mother never told them to me -- possibly because I might have been a little too direct about how I'd already heard them, and anyhow, that wasn't what happened. My poor cousin was just too polite.

What we do see is that, as all the reports point out, when Joe was in the Senate, he didn't have Secret Service protection, so it's hard to avoid thinking this story was cobbled up from some combination of foggy memories and wishful thinking, and although it doesn't rise to a medical diagnosis, it kinda proves that Joe can be a tiresome bore who trots out the same old chestnuts on the slightest pretext. In contrast, heads of state were always delighted to hear Reagan's insider anecdotes of old-time Hollywood, and I suspect after-hours chat with Trump would be just as much fun.

But these strange vignettes, especially in the context of Joe's Uncle Bosey stories, point to how unrealistic Nate Silver's well-intended advice from this past February is, that Joe should do "improvisational public appearances".

Here's what I'd propose. Over the course of the next several weeks, Biden should do four lengthy sitdown interviews with “non-friendly” sources. “Non-friendly” doesn't mean hostile: nonpartisan reporters with a track record of asking tough questions would work great. A complete recording of the interviews should be made public. The interviews ought to include a mix of different media (e.g. television and print) and journalistic perspectives.

At the end of Silver's list of possibilities, he adds,

Wild card. Take your pick. Bonus points for Fox News, though I doubt Biden would do it. Go on Ezra Klein's podcast? Go on Rogan? Just kidding, I think. But Bernie Sanders did it.

I would think the Howard Stern interview fully fits Silver's wild card category -- but the takeaway everyone got from it was the bizarre business of the dirty picures the ladies used to send him. Except that Silver's other recommendations are precisely what even the New York Times has now accused him of dodging, for instance:

A lengthy sitdown interview with the Washington bureaus of the New York Times or Washington Post.

Just this past Thursday,

The New York Times issued a scorching statement on Thursday blasting President Joe Biden for avoiding media interviews as establishing a “dangerous precedent” . . . .

The Times in a statement called it “troubling” that Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term. . . . That is why Mr. Sulzberger has repeatedly urged the White House to have the president sit down with The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN and other major independent news organizations that millions of Americans rely on to understand their government.”

Back in February, Silver wrote of his proposal that Joe should sit down with the major outlets,

This really isn't too much to ask. These are the sorts of interviews that every other recent president has done. I admit that I'm asking Biden to pack in several in a row, but he has to make up for lost time. And the timing is urgent because he and his inner circle have to make sure that he's really up for a second term and that this is the best option for Democrats.

But that was February, and this is late April. If anything, the timing is more urgent. I suspect that the reason Biden's handlers haven't seen the urgency Nate Silver -- and now the New York Times -- see is that they fully recognize that Joe isn't up to any sort of unscripted or "improvisational" forum, and this has become a major problem.

In fact, I'm starting to wonder if we're facing a crisis that's been officially unacknowledged for some time, but there's going to be an event that finally drives it into the spotlight. I keep thinking about the 1936 abdication crisis in the UK:

[T]he British press remained quiet on the subject until Alfred Blunt, Bishop of Bradford, gave a speech to his diocesan conference on 1 December, which alluded to the King's need of divine grace: "We hope that he is aware of his need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of his awareness." The press took this for the first public comment by a notable person on the crisis and it became front-page news on 3 December.

As I've been saying, one issue is that despite his repeated claims (which he also made in the Stern inverview) never to have touched alcohol, the empirical evidence of intoxicated speech, the slurring, hypercorrection, and random pauses, makes me think some sort of revelation about the real circumstances can't be too far away -- or if not that, some equivalent headline to the news of Bishop Blunt's admonition.